Recent publications (February 2021)
There’s a lot of research being done on pollinators and pollinator protection. We have made a selection of papers that we think are interesting to you. If you have interesting papers you would like to highlight please let us know!
Global decline in bee species richness
Eduardo E. Zattara and Marcelo A. Aizen used publicly available data on specimen collections and observations gathered at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) to assess global trends in the number of bee species observed. They found that, since the 1990s, the number of species observed has declined steadily. This may indicate a worldwide decline in bee species, Zattara and Aizen say.
Read the paper titled Worldwide occurrence records suggest a global decline in bee species richness.
Climate change reduces abundance and diversity of wild bees
ScienceDaily published a news item about researchers at Penn State, who found that wild bees are more affected by climate change than by disturbances to their habitats. The results of the study were published in Global Change Biology. Especially temperature and precipitation seem to be important factors. In the study, high temperature and precipitation were associated with a lower abundance of wild bees. According to the researchers, the findings suggest that addressing land-use issues alone is not sufficient to protect wild bees.